Moral decision?

This story was brought to my attention early this morning and I thought it best to post on it right away. A girl, who was raped in front of her home, was denied Plan B when she went to the hospital due to the doctor's religious beliefs. He said he had an ethical and moral decision to make. The girl then called her gynocologist, who gave her a prescription, but when she went to fill it at her local pharmacy, was told they were out of it and had to drive 25 miles to the next town to get it.

The propaganda against women's reproductive rights has become so polarized that now women can't even easily aquire a high dose of the pill, which is all Plan B is. I wonder if this doctor refuses to write prescriptions for daily birth control as well. The thing that is the most aggrivating, is when the "moral" and "ethical" cards are played by doctors who turn their noses up at rape victims... who say that their own ideology is more important than the health of those who are physically and emotionally traumatized.

The fundamentalist movement seems to be the scapegoat for, and tool of, a greater patriarchal machine. It seems, more often than not, that it is men in high places who stand in the way of a woman's decision of what to do with her body. They claim it is their religious beliefs, that they have to save "the unborn children," but there is a viciousness behind their voice... a fevered desperation to keep control of the one thing that can stop a woman in her progressive tracks. Without constant access to birth control and emergency contraception, we are a slave to our bodies, destined to be incubators of life, be it wanted or unwanted, until we are all used up.

Isn't it moral and ethical to allow a woman to determine the course of her life to the best of her ability and not interfere with that decision?

"No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother." - Margaret Sanger

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In my opinion (and I'm not stating a legal opinion here, just a personal one), the physician committed malpractice by not providing her with the information and, at minimum, a proper referral, which he never did, even when the rape survivor's mother called the hospital where he works about it later.

He has a responsibility to hand any rape case off to a physician capable of fully treating the patient or, in absence of such, treating the patient fully himself. If he will not do so, then the hospital should not permit him to practice in their emergency department.

The ones I've known who behave like this about emergency contraception have all been real pigs with gay patients, too. Somehow I doubt it's a coincidence.

Your post reminds me of the ways that trans issues and women's issues often overlap. How often are women who have suffered these types of assaults denied medical care? Transpeople die frequently for doctors refusal to treat them based on "moral" objections. Sad Sad Sad.

The whole issue of professionals exercising personal religious beliefs, by refusing to provide the best standard of care, as determined by their profession, is utter nonsense in aid of all kinds of evil agendas, some of them mentioned here. Professionals, such as physicians and pharmacists, are ethically bound to treat anyone who needs it, without regard for their own scrupples; that is a condition of their license to practice. The principle applies to druggists who decline to supply legal birth control and to physicians who decline to offer their patients legal abortions, and to any other professional in a similar postion who puts their own prejudices before their ethical duty.

This abuse will stop, perhaps, when someone notable, e.g. James Dobson, has a bad car accident and is transported to a Jehova's Witness hospital.